Cousin Agam Fhein

by Bruce Ferguson

One of the things I remember about Inverness was the times we spent on vacation there. Mom and Dad would farm out the five kids to various relatives so that we wouldn’t be such a burden to one family. John would stay with uncle Danny, Art would stay with uncle Roddie, Dave would stay with someone else(?) and Anne Marie would stay with aunt Billie. I spilt my time between aunt Billie’s with mom or with dad at Grandma and Grandpa’s.

As a young child, I was fascinated with the idea that the hot water heater was connected with the stove. Aunt Sadie would be up early to fire up the stove for breakfast. After breakfast, there would be enough hot water to do the dishes, do the laundry and begin to prepare for supper. She would roll out the wringer washer and do the laundry in the kitchen. She would utilize her time during loads to bake the world’s greatest sugar cookies! The laundry would then be hung out on the line. (It was summertime and it wouldn’t take long to dry. During the winter it would be hung in the attic.)

After supper, which would include vegetables, gravy, meat, rolls, and etc., the entire kitchen would be cleaned up and everything put away. Then the hot water would be turned off. Dinner would consist of biscuits, cookies, fruit, cheese and whatever happened to left over.

As a kid, not having to take a bath at the end of a long summer day was something I was not used to.

• Mom and Dad: Hughie Ferguson and Greet Macdonald
• John, Art, Dave, Anne Marie: Hughie and Greet’s kids
• Aunt Billie: Greet’s sister
• Aunt Sadie: Hughie’s sister
  
• Uncle Danny: Hughie’s brother
• Uncle Roddy: Hughie’s brother
• Grandma and Grandpa: Hughie’s parents, Mattie Ferguson and Sadie MacDougall

by Janet Stubbert

During the Second World War, Canadian citizens sacrificed much in order to assist and support the many young men and women who were called upon to defend our country. Women left at home soon found themselves filling the void in the workplace. This indeed was the birth of women’s freedom groups.

Life as we knew it changed radically; food was rationed, money was scarce, and ladies’ undergarments sported buttons where elastic once was.

Halifax Harbour, opened year round, was an important and busy port during the war years. Streets were forever filled with servicemen awaiting their departure for overseas. The young women of Halifax became accustomed to the unsolicited attention they received from young servicemen.

One warm afternoon my sisters, Evelyn and Anna, strolled along Halifax’s main thoroughfare. Following closely behind them, were several young sailors making polite asides to one another concerning the demeanour of the young ladies in front of them. The girls, quite aware of the attention they were getting, pretended to ignore it. Occasionally, one of them finding a remark captivating, looked over her shoulder and smiled at the handsome young men while the other looked down her nose.

All was well in heaven and on earth until Evelyn felt the button on her undergarment loosen. The undies fell to her feet. Immediately stepping out of the unmentionables, she astutely retrieved them and with great presence and with a flourish she passed them to her sister saying, “Here!!! Don’t ever let that happen again!!�

Flabbergasted, Anna stood scarlet-faced, stuttering, and stammering… to the great delight of the laughing sailors.

Anna, Evelyn, and Janet Stubbert are daughters of Jack Stubbert and Mary Rankin.

by David Ferguson

I bought my first new car in 1974. I was torn between the VW Rabbit, a new model that year, and the Plymouth Valiant.

The Rabbit was different, but it was also a new model that year. Consumer Reports liked the car overall, but of course had no information on how well it would hold up.

I figured I wasn’t going to be able to buy another new car anytime soon, and so I didn’t like the idea of helping to try out a new model. So I went with the Valiant instead.

This wasn’t a cool choice. It seemed that most Valiant owners were little old ladies with blue hair. On the other hand, the car did have a long — a very long — history, and while it wasn’t the best car ever built, it was about the best car within my price range.

Not that that range was very crowded.

I kept the Valiant for about ten years, by which time I’d moved from Detroit to the suburbs of Washington DC. My family had gone from one child to three, and the hot summers convinced me I needed something better than the Valiant’s vinyl seats. I even went so far as to buy a car with air conditioning.

Not to say that the Valiant was low-end, but my kids noticed immediately that the new car had carpet on the floor, not some kind of thick rubber.

The Valiant was getting weary from commuting and from long car trips back to Detroit, and had had a series of increasingly expensive repairs. The tipping point was when the guy at the garage said I might need engine work, but he’d have to take a look at the cylinder heads to be sure. That was a multi-hundred-dollar operation, so I decided to simply run an ad:

For sale: 1974 Plymouth Valiant. 113,000 miles. Engine needs work.

I don’t remember if I put a price in, but I thought I’d be lucky to get $200. I certainly didn’t expect that the first phone call about the car would come in at eight in the morning the first day the ad ran. We probably had fifteen calls by the time I got home that evening — to find two men arguing about who had called first.

Neither of them living in the same county as I did. In fact, neither lived in the same state. One had driven about 30 miles from the far side of the District of Columbia, and the other hand come from a similar distance away in Maryland.

The shorter man, with a strong Indian accident, complained that he had called first, though he didn’t know the time. The taller man wasn’t impressed by this at all. The shorter man said, “I spent a lot of gas to get here!”

So the taller man took out his wallet and offered the guy $10. Which he took.

With that, the short guy left, and the tall guy offered me $200 for the car.

I hadn’t had time to get the title out of the safe-deposit box, which annoyed him greatly. I’m sure he thought I was a rank amateur in the world of car sales, which was the correct way for him to think.

Probably, considering how willingly he paid the $200 for the car, I could have gotten more, but I kept telling myself I wasn’t trying to put anything over on anyone.

With the money from selling the car, we bought a new set of pots and pans, a couple of which I still have.  So they’ve gotten good mileage.